TECHNICAL NOTES
SYSTEM SETUP
Type: Overdubbing a track with Different Headphone Mixes
Description: Hilo is the ideal go-to box for overdubbing into existing sessions. Portable,
easy to use, and, of course, fantastic sounding – a musician can lay down major label release quality parts in the most modest of environments.
In this scenario, let’s imagine that we have a project well underway in one of the major
DAW applications (Pro Tools, Cubase, Sonar, Logic, etc). Now we wish to overdub an electric guitar part. Both the musician and the engineer should have control over the mix
levels. The engineer has set up busses with mix elements separated to different Hilo play
devices. For example, Drums bussed to Out 1+2, guitars to 3+4, bass and keys to 5+6 and
vocals to 7+8. This is done so that there is independent level control of these groups for
the engineer and performer.
The guitar is plugged into
an amp, and being recorded
by two microphones plugged
into a stereo mic pre-amp.
The recording engineer is
monitoring through speakers
in the Control Room.
The Musician will be
listening to headphones
plugged directly into
Hilo.
The cable connections:
Monitor Out > Speakers in Control room
Headphone Out > Phones on musician
Line In > Signal from stereo mic preamp
USB > Recording computer (alternatively we could do this as going to an AES16e card)
Set up
Play
Play
Play
Play
the
1+2
3+4
5+6
7+8
Busses in DAW organized as:
= Drums
= Guitars
= Bass and Keys
= Vocals
Now the Hilo settings:
Open the Output Mix Routing Page. We’ll
start with the performer’s headphone mix.
Here we have the 4 USB Play streams assigned
to the Phones Out, as well as the Line in
carrying the incoming guitar audio. The performer thought the vocals were a bit loud,
so the screen shows USB 7+8 attenuated by
6dB.
For the Engineer’s mix, we will set up the
Monitor Out settings. The engineer doesn’t
want to hear the vocal at all, so USB Play
7+8 is muted, and he also prefers the guitar
tracks lower, so USB Play 3+4 is attenuated
by 3dB. This is how the screen will look for
his mix:
Now we’re ready to record. The Engineer will
use USB Record 1+2 as the input signal for
the record track in the DAW. Over all listening level can be set with the Rotary knob
on the Hilo.
The engineer likes this set up and has a
second guitar player coming in the next day
for more overdubs. To save this scene (including routing and levels), click on the
TOOLS icon on the bottom, bush the Save
Scene button, push Scene 1.
To recall the setting, push the Recall Scene
button, then Scene 1 and the settings are
all recalled.